


The Past is an Empty Café Terrace

by glioscarnach



Category: History Boys (2006), History Boys - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-20 00:32:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12421368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glioscarnach/pseuds/glioscarnach
Summary: Don sees David off for a school tour to Paris





	The Past is an Empty Café Terrace

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Eavan Boland's 'The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me'  
> -  
> This is completely 100% self-indulgent nonsense fluff but I Do Not Care.  
> (Also My Brand is apparently OFCs from the Northside of Dublin, sue me.)
> 
> tumblr is @lady-threewhiteleopards

‘Really, Don, you don’t need to see me off,’ David is telling him, for the umpteenth time. It’s three in the fucking morning, and he’s spending the next three days herding a clatter of excitable fourteen-year-old girls through Paris, so his tone is already rather defeated-sounding.

‘I might as well, though, if I’m driving you to the school anyway,’ Don counters, trying to stifle a yawn. He’s a bit pink in the way he always is when he’s doing a Romantic Gesture, and David feels a warm surge of affection blooming in his chest. If Don wasn’t squinting at the rain-slicked road, he’d kiss his cheek.

‘I’ll miss you,’ he says instead, and just catches the grin on Don’s face in the brief orange illumination of the streetlights.

‘Gey’ore, it’s only a few days.’

‘A few days for _you_. As for me, I’m in charge of stopping teenage girls from falling off the Eiffel Tower. I shall come back _aged_.’

Don huffs a laugh. ‘I’ll still love you, though.’

‘I’ll be decrepit. Possibly I’ll contract arthritis through the sheer volume of screeching I’ll endure.’

‘I’m fairly sure that’s not how arthritis works, love,’ says Don, as they’re pulling up outside the school. The tour bus isn’t even there yet; there are a small scatter of cars around. Don likes to be early, for all that he never irons his shirts. David takes the opportunity the wait offers to lean over and kiss him, hand carding through his still sleep-mussed hair. Don hums against his lips, and God, he really will miss him a ridiculous amount.

The moment is rather fucking ruined by an insistent tapping on the window and David’s subsequently registering the symptoms of a minor bloody heart attack. Don all but leaps away, practically scarlet, and David is immensely fucking relieved upon looking out the window that it’s Maura, rather than a pupil, who’s stood there laughing at him. The Year Sevens still weren’t letting him live down the lovey-dovey post-it note Don had left on his lunchbox six months ago.

He sighs very deeply and opens the door, and Maura is cackling at him like an absolute harridan as he gets out. He points this out, of course, and she just raises an impeccable eyebrow.

‘It’s not my fault yiz’re acting like the teenagers we’re s’pose to be dealing with,’ she says, accent heavy from lack of sleep. ‘Anyway, fuck you, I’m jealous – I’ve never had a fella would bother his arse to drop me off for a school tour.’

Don’s getting out of the driver’s seat as she’s saying it, and David glances at him just long enough to see him going red up to the ears.

‘Yeah, well,’ David grins. ‘That’s the price you pay for heterosexuality.’

‘Fuck off,’ says Maura, fondly. ‘Lookit, I’ll give ye lovebirds a minute, alright? Least til the girls fucking descend.’

‘Thanks, Maur,’ David kisses her cheek.

She just snorts and saunters off to the nearest streetlight so she’s got light enough to roll up another fag.

‘Alright there, love?’ David asks, drily, as Don twitches about in his tatty fucking coat. It didn’t matter how often David made him get a new one; within a day his clothes always looked like he’d been sleeping in them, in a doorway, for fucking _months_.

‘Fuck off,’ Don mutters, without any venom.

David looks up and down the still-deserted street before kissing him again. It’s warm and tender and soft, and Don’s wrapping his arms round him, and David really fucking doesn’t want to go to bastard Paris, even if the ridge of the car window is digging into his back and the drizzle is ruining his hair.

‘SIR,’ the hideous adolescent shriek breaks through every molecule of romance in David’s soul just as Don manages to jump back about a fucking metre and a half in a nanosecond. He just about suppresses a fucking giggle at the look of terror on Don's face before he’s all but bowled over himself by a combination of Daphne, the Year Ten yard monitor, and her younger sister. He has absolutely no bloody idea where they’ve come from, but mercifully the bus pulls in then and he manages, with the help of Daphne’s mother, to herd her onto it. The mother gives Don a sympathetic look over her shoulder as she’s loading her daughter’s bag and David doesn’t need to look to know he’s blushing like a fucking beetroot again.

It’s more than a bit hectic after that, as all the students, mams in tow, arrive, and David and Maura are inundated with screeching and have their attention fully occupied with ticking off names and making sure for the final time that everyone has passports ready. Finally, every pupil is accounted for on the bus, and David is honestly surprised when he turns around and sees Don, if half-asleep, still leaning on their shitty car.

‘Oh love,’ he says. ‘Go home to bed, won’t you?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Don mumbles, and turns back into the car, pulling out a slightly battered Tesco’s bag and shoving it into David’s hands. ‘Lunch,’ he explains, yawning.

‘Don, I’m going to Paris, love,’ David laughs. ‘The food’s my only consolation.’

Don shrugs, and he’s blushing again, like a muppet.

‘You’ve got the hotel’s number, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

And David decides that fuck it, he really doesn’t care if his pupils are whooping out the windows, he definitely does need a proper goodbye kiss.


End file.
